Metal Reviews

But...that was funny as fuck.

This is accurate.

Back before I knew how to download stuff (pretty young age, that was) and lacked a computer that could do so, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what albums to buy in the store. I thought 'hrm, do I go for this one that I've never heard of with the neat cover and the good review in Metal Maniacs or the one that had no review in Metal Maniacs but that my friend Ian liked' and so on. When I bought a bad album (my first one was a late-period Dimmu Borgir that I got because Stormblast was good) I was genuinely disappointed because Tower Records had no return policy and I couldn't get my money back.

When I figured out how to download stuff, it was maybe two days before I was sitting on a vast pile of music like a dragon on a pile of gold. If I didn't like something, all I had to do was delete it. If I liked a band, all I had to do was download their entire catalogue in maybe another hour and I was sitting pretty.

Now I'm not saying that downloading wasn't a net positive thing, because there's no way in hell I would have ever figured out anything about black metal without the internet. Same with death metal, same with doom, same with grind. The internet has had a positive effect on underground bands because there, they can let everyone know about them.

But it is undeniably true that when you have to choose between one thing or the other and there's nothing else for a few weeks, you listen more and you listen better. And anyone who never did the whole 'this one or this one, hmm, I have to decide because I can't afford another one for a few weeks,' gig will probably either deny this or never understand it.

I support Ken here man.. Even though I'm just twenty, I nearly always buy my music.. I used to download back in the day, but it's not the same. Not at all. Reading the lyrics while lsitening to your cd with headphones is the best way for me to get into an album and truly appreciate the whole thing.

I think we can all agree that buying is better than downloading.

Something like that.

Not really or not by much.

I just don't think that's as true as people like to believe. Back when I was spending a lot of money on records, i was more or less ending up with piles of cd's I didn't listen to. Now that I download music the stuff sits on a hard drive. It's really the same thing. I think it comes down to the desire to listen to something and I'm not in the camp of forcing myself to enjoy something because I spent money on it.

Nowadays, I'd much rather listen to an album and if I like it enough, put it on a list of stuff to buy later on because it's the only way I can get archival quality mp3's.

Really, downloading helps more than hurts my listening habits because I can always put everything on random that I haven't rated yet (i assign songs a rating in the comment field so I don't forget about them) and discover new stuff I didn't know I had.

I think i've paid my dues by buying more than 500 cds and records over the last 5 years, but i'm not going to stop buying records either by bands that I think deserve the sale. Major Label stuff is probably never going to get my money again, but the indie labels definitely will.

Personally, i'd rather send checks out once a year to Steamhammer, Insideout, Locomotive, Candlelight, ect. and to the bands themselves. I'd rather financially support those who create good music directly than spend money on a physical product that to me has no inherant value aside from what i can get for free.

exactly, i'm the same way. i can see where Ken and Dead Machine are coming from, but i wasn't like that at all when i bought music. a lot of the time i ended up buying something i already had on CD (because my sister gave me a big stack of just CDs that she got at a garage sale and didn't like anymore, and a lot of NIN stuff doesn't have the album name on the CD itself), and i was like "woops, oh well" and left it on my shelf. i never really had any hard decisions to make between albums because even if something i bought sucked i was happy returning to my favourite Tool/Radiohead/Rage Against the Machine albums. i didn't care about collecting full discographies because usually i didn't even know how many albums they had. i only became obsessed with discovering new bands and getting everything by them after i started downloading stuff.

Come on. Was that necessary? Obviously I was joking. I'm not that mean! Haha.

People don't force themselves to like something just because they paid for it. What downloading does, is it allows listeners to simply not care enough.

How many here have seen things like this on a forum before:


Twenty minutes later...


And so on. Now if that random turd had spent his hard-earned money on that, he wouldn't declare the album a festering pile of poo in twenty minutes. He'd sit down and give it a real listen.

Buying music doesn't force a person to like it, but it does force them to try a lot harder at appreciating it. I've spent tons of money on albums I simply could never get into, but I've also let albums simmer for a long time before they click. And these are albums that random turds just trash and delete after skimming 40 seconds of each song.

That's the difference between downloading and buying. You won't like everything you buy, but you'll never so flippantly disregard it, either.

LOL 4 pages from a crappy album and a crappy band go figure

That's the MR way.

Oh, sorry Satan's Anus, wasn't serious. Forgot the smilee.

Erm, I changed it for you and it doesn't really work if we're honest with ourselves-a smiley on the end of a sentence does not a joke make...

Better?

And private jokes aren't necessarily meant to be 'got' by the entire forum.

I was trying to wind you up.

Like Buddha, or a toy with a broken spring, I can't be wound up.

I was thinking of posting some analogy along the lines of "we don't have to struggle hard to get basic food requirements now any more either but that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's called progress". But then I thought "wait, the ease at which we can acquire food has turned us into a hemisphereful of fat bastards one jog away from a coronary heart attack".

So maybe there is a point there after all.

I don't know about that. If I didn't like a bought album, I'd trade it in for credit at a local shop I'd go to that has a great metal selection, and put it towards another album. I would give an album a few spins, but if I hated it, I hated it... And I would disregard it.